kira o'reilly article : performance spaces

This week I read a couple of articles about Kira O'Reilly's performance practice and about artists that use flesh and biological matter in their work. Her works seem to be primarily about the female body and to consider the interrelating threads of personal, sexual, social and political identity. The article I found the most interesting was called "The Touch and the Cut: an annotated dialogue with Kira O'Reilly" written by Patrick Duggan. An article in two parts, the first section describes the writers experience of Untitled (Syncope), 2007 a performance O'Reilly created for SPILL Festival in the UK, while the second part is an interview and discussion between artist and writer. 

Untitled (Syncope), 2007 takes place in the SHUNT vaults underneath London Bridge Station. The location, a dark, labyrinth of tunnels seems important to creating an atmosphere of unease and uncertainty in the audience. The crowd are huddled together, waiting for the performance to begin when they see the artist approaching. She is naked except for red high heels, lipstick and a burlesque headress. She carries a mirror and walks backwards towards them, catching their gaze in the mirror. There is the steady sound of a metronome ticking during the performance. Moving through the crowd, O'Reilly brushes against the audience member, reaches out and takes one by the hand. They are lead through the space, a series of arches and tunnels. 
O'Reilly holds a scalpel. She bends her body downwards and cuts the flesh of her calf muscles causing blood to ooze and puddle at her ankle and the edge of her red shoes. "The metronome's pace quickens and grows louder as she tries to keep her taut, automaton style movements up with the pace set by the mechanical ticking, all the while teetering in her high heels. She never speaks." 





 Although my experience of this performance is via anecdote and photographs, I feel that it is a very powerful, atmospheric artwork. The way it is described by Patrick Duggan makes me feel that to be in the audience and experience O'Reilly's body within that particular space would be emotional and affecting.

"The touch and the cut, both acts which press upon the bodies of the audience in different ways, gave the performance a strange sense of familiarity and extremity, and it is this dichotomous mix which, much as Amelia Jones suggests, causes it to feel slightly voyeuristic, a scene stumbled upon which we should look away from but it is impossible to do so."

I found the use of space in this performance particularly interesting, the stark underground space made entirely of cold stone. In the second section of the article, O'Reilly discusses the space a little: 
"The arches frame the body beautifully.... There is something about these spaces being so harsh and to present the body unclothed, vulnerable, without any staging or floor laid down, there's something really nice about being able to do that, where you have a mixture of materials with skin and stone."

This is something I've being thinking about in terms of my own performances; the way the body can correlate, contrast or be positioned within spaces. The way that architecture and surfaces can intersect with the body. 

VALIE EXPORT

inspiring performances : live art development agency : london

A few weeks ago while I was in London I was lucky enough to spend two days immersed in the reading room of the Live Art Development Agency, a center that supports the study, research and practice of live art. The reading room had a very comprehensive collection of books, journals and catalogs, as well as a vast library of dvds and videos of performances. I was pretty much in heaven and spent two full days reading and watching dvds of work by artists from the renowned to the obscure. Here are some of the artists and works that I found most fascinating:

Kira O'Reilly   

Succour, 2002

In this performance, O'Reilly begins wrapping a tight lattice-work of sticky tape around her legs. Proceeding around her leg she cuts a diagonal line into each square of flesh that is exposed creating a pattern on the body. She then continues applying tape and cutting the pattern onto her abdomen and breasts. At the conclusion she removes the tape leaving the network of very evenly applied cuts. One of the things this work makes me think of is the torture method of 'a death by a thousand cuts.' Though the cuts are shallow, and she does not seem to be in serious pain, it would be such a raw feeling to be cut all over like that. It's such a controlled and precise action though, the cuts are applied to her body almost as someone would draw flowers on wrapping paper.  

"This action begins where words fail me...Using processes of measuring and cutting, the skin is (re)marked like a text or a drawing, etching a history that can be followed on the surface of the skin, like a palimpset. Tenderised, it brings sharply into focus a visual and visceral vocabulary that invokes notions of trauma (a wound) and stigma (a mark) towards a 'spoiling' and opening of the body to explore an alterity or otherness."
- Kira O'Reilly, Notes from the National Review of Live Art, RealTime no.52

Watching this did make me think of writing and inscribing, about different types of mark making, and the way that scars and wounds create patterns on our bodies. It reminded me of 'Crash' by JG Ballard which I read recently, in which there is a real obsession with the body being marked and injured via mechanical means. Where the body is imprinted with even, exact wounds by the metal objects around it. 


Inthewrongplaceness, 2005

"There is a room in a house that is Home. One at a time people come into the space for the merest of time, five minutes. They have been told they can touch the human animal and the non-human animal. First they are instructed to put on a pair of latex gloves and then to spray ethanol onto the gloves. They are also reminded that they can just look and stay a while."




I move slowly with the piggy body
Kill no. 000053, 48.5kg
Bits of me go inside her ;
My head disapears into the rib cavity
Where the soft organs have been recently excavated.
She is body without organs
I dance with her.

I am stoked, prodded, probed to within fractions of decency by one
I don't look at anyone.
I keep moving with her.
Our bodies pretend to turn into one another, a funny piggy girl,
A dead sow lady, she still has her eyelashes.
Mine Close.

-Kira O'Reilly, notes on the performance.

This performance fascinates me on many levels. The merging and blending of the human and animal bodies into one form, as though they are making love or dancing or just holding one another. The contrast of dead and living forms and flesh, the way that the room is set up with rich decor and flowers to look like an exclusive hotel or a still life, the way that the audience are invited to touch the 'human and non human animals,' its a visceral and suggestive performance. It makes me think of the use of animal flesh in my tripe/cocoon series and wonder about the future incarnations of that performance. 


Stairfalling, 2009

I only saw a few photographic stills of this work but it interested me in that it it showed a violent and sinister action, slowed down, exaggerated and made almost ridiculous. In it O'Reilly enacts a fall down a steep flight of stairs at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The pace of the fall is choreographed so that the entire descent takes 3 hours. It doesn't come across to its full extent in the photographs, but I imagine live this would have been excruciating and fascinating, a drawn out enactment of a frantic, sometimes accidental, sometimes homicidal act. 






SenVoodoo

Arterial, 2005

I have read about this performance before in an article by Anne Marsh, so it was fascinating to see the video. In it two women shrouded in white walk in slow measured paces towards one another along a white platform. They both have their arms outstretched and drip even, regular drops of blood onto the floor creating a long river behind each of them as they draw closer together. It is a very stark and beautiful, with the droplets of blood tracing the path they are walking. The women seem drawn to one another, yet when they meet in the middle they turn away. There is a feeling of intimacy between these two figures, but there is fear too. 
The notes in the DVD case said this: 
"Arterial is a performance about loss and mourning. It has universal relevance and is recontextualised with each new siting. With its use of the primal medium of blood, Arterial also confronts issues of fear, infection, disease and death." SenVoodoo are a performance duo made up of Ana Wojak and Fiona McGregor who have performed throughout Sydney as well as internationally. 




"Blood in our time is a dangerous medium. Amidst war, real death, detention and persecution blood is spilt. How can artists enter into this realm and make a point? Make a difference?"
-Anne Marsh, 'Extreme Acts: Live, Remade and Remediated,' Eyeline no 69

I think it is worth questioning how trauma works in performance art. When violence is so much a part of broadcast media and everyday experience, what does it mean to choreograph performances that confront violence, pain or trauma? Can these works be relevant socially and politically? 



Karen Finley

Shut up and Love Me, 2004

"Shut up and Love Me deconstructs desire into a series of unlovely impulses, climaxing with Finley rolling naked in her golden pond. Of honey. This is a female libido run amok- raunchy, messy, inappropriate, even grotesque. This is sexual power both flaunted and mocked. At the core of this work is Finley's observation that women are defined by their sexuality, then demonized for it."

This work went for around 45 minutes and involved dance, a disco striptease, storytelling and cavorting in a pool of honey. In this performance Karen Finley tells stories of sexual encounters and pursuits, lapses into animalistic  outbursts and performs exaggeratedly sexual dances. It is upfront, comical and complicated all at once. While watching it I felt at various times aroused, unsettled, sick and amused. So all in all, brilliant. 
I really wish I could make work of this quality, that involved a narrative, could make people laugh, and yet still be very affecting.  



Sonia Richli

Untitled, 2003



This performance was staged in a public place and involved the artist, painted green and positioned behind strands of barbed wire. Many of Sonia Richli's performances seem to involve suspension or restraint applied to the body, followed by periods of stillness and endurance.


Paradise Lost, 2004










The days I spent reading articles and watching DVD's at the Live Art Development Agency were really inspiring. There was such a good range of different work and opinions and I think it will inspire me to keep momentum up with my performances. 


The White Building
Unit 7, Queens Yard
White Post Lane, Hackney Wick
London E9 5EN

www.thisisliveart.co.uk

pupa : performance photos

Here are some photos of my most recent performance, Pupa. 
I felt like it was successful- there was a good sized audience there and it was disgusting, harrowing, playful and pretty all at once.
It's my plan to build on this work....
There will be more flesh cocoons in the future.